


Before the Darkest Hours

by Helholden



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bonding, Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Developing Friendships, F/M, Hogwarts Fifth Year, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Opposites Attract, Post - Order of the Phoenix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-09
Updated: 2014-07-09
Packaged: 2018-02-08 04:28:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1926633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helholden/pseuds/Helholden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Looking for a quiet moment of reprieve away from people, Harry mulls over what Dumbledore has revealed to him when Luna shows up to interrupt his solitude. She’s looking to catch a Jipselwaff. Harry wasn’t expecting to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before the Darkest Hours

* * *

 

Harry thought that by now he could cope with being alone.

 

The problem was he was so used to human interaction by then that the solitude he constantly put himself in as of late was painful for him. He didn’t do it intentionally, but . . . well, maybe he did. He didn’t expect for the Astronomy Tower to be empty for long, but it was for now, and that was all that mattered to Harry. He did not like the future anymore, just like he did not like the past. Here and now was all Harry cared about, and come to think of it, he didn’t really like that much either.

 

It was hard accepting what Dumbledore had told him. He wasn’t sure if he actually had by now. Sure, it was there in his mind, there in his voice, being constantly a part of everything he did, but it wasn’t lucid enough. No matter how many times Harry admitted it out loud to himself, he subconsciously denied it over and over again. There didn’t seem to be much point in believing it or not. Harry just had to play his part, whether it was a part he wanted to play or not.

 

He was so lost inside of his thoughts that he didn’t even hear the door to the Astronomy Tower open as another person slipped onto the parapet with quiet feet.

 

“You shouldn’t lean over the edge like that,” said the dreamy and faraway voice of Luna Lovegood. “I saw some Jipselwaffs flying around it earlier. They tend to hang around window ledges, and they like to bite,” she added a bit warningly.

 

Harry turned around to face her, placing his hands upon the stone ledge of the parapet. The first thing he saw of Luna was her straggly dirty-blonde hair in the fading light of the evening, gleaming with a silver-gold color.

 

“These aren’t windows,” Harry said flatly. “It’s a tower.”

 

“Is there a roof?” asked Luna, glancing up at the roof that did indeed cover the top of the tower.

 

“Yes,” Harry answered. He wondered where she was going with this.

 

“Are there beams holding up the roof?”

 

“Obviously.”

 

“Then they’re windows,” Luna finished, coming up to stand at the ledge about a foot away from him.

 

Harry opened his mouth to say something in retort, but then he found he had nothing to say, and promptly closed it. He also thought about asking her what a Jipselwaff was, but then he thought against that, too. Instead, Harry turned away from her, and went back to gazing over the ledge of the tower again.

 

“Hello, Luna,” he said at last. It was a late greeting, but she was a friend. A bit strange, of course, but still a good friend.

 

“Hello, Harry,” she replied serenely, as if she had just seen him.

 

Harry frowned, and turned around again. “What are you doing here?” he asked her out of sheer curiosity.

 

“Looking for Jipselwaffs,” Luna answered him, her bright silvery eyes positively glittering. “I told Terry Boot about them, but he didn’t believe they existed, so I came up here to catch one and show it to him.”

 

Harry narrowed his eyes. She had to be kidding.

 

“Do they really exist?” Harry asked her, trying to sound interested so as not to be rude, even if she was a bit dotty, but to be honest with himself he didn’t sound very convincing. “I’ve never heard of them before,” he added truthfully.

 

Luna grinned like he had never seen her grin before. Her whole face seemed to be glowing with happiness. “Of course they do,” she said cheerfully. “Would you like to help me catch one?”

 

He had nothing better to do at the moment. Why not waste time trying to catch an imaginary creature? “Sure,” Harry said absently, shrugging his shoulders.

 

Luna beamed at him for his response and lifted the strap of a navy blue bag, which he hadn’t noticed until then, from over her shoulders. She lowered the bag to the stone floor of the Astronomy Tower and opened it up. From within, Luna took out a medium-sized glass jar with holes poked into the lid, a pair of thick gloves, which caused Harry’s eyebrows to rise up as he wondered what exactly those were for, and finally, a small drawstring pouch that appeared quite full. Harry could guess what was inside.

 

Luna approached Harry with all of these things in her arms, handing one of the gloves to him. Harry took it; it was for the right hand. He slipped it on, flexing his fingers inside of it. He then watched as Luna fit the left glove onto her own hand.

 

“I gave you the right-handed glove because that’s the hand you use in Quidditch,” she said in her serene voice, a soft smile etched on her face.

 

“Yeah,” Harry replied dumbly, taking his eyes off hers because staring into her abnormally large eyes was making him a bit uncomfortable. He settled instead for watching her unscrew the lid of the glass jar. Luna placed the jar and the lid onto the floor off to the side, and Harry suddenly gained actual interest when she began to open the little rainbow colored pouch.

 

“What’s that?” he asked.

 

“It’s salt,” Luna affirmed. “Jipselwaffs are very fond of salt. They’re known for attacking people’s eyes because of the tear ducts, which is why I warned you to be careful.” Luna looked up at Harry, blinking at him curiously. “But you do wear glasses, so I suppose that makes you safe.” She stared at him for a little while longer, in which Harry felt very uncomfortable, but then she turned away from him and began to pour the salt in a straight line along the windowsill with careful hands that seemed to have gone through these motions a hundred times before.

 

“What aren’t you wearing goggles or something, then?” Harry questioned conversationally, trying to ease up the weird tension he felt around her.

 

“I’ve charmed my eyes to keep them away.”

 

“Oh.”

 

When Luna was finished, she put the drawstring pouch into her pocket. “Now, we wait,” she said.

 

Harry stood there, feeling incredibly stupid. “Um, what exactly are we—” He paused. She knew what she was looking for. It was _him_ that had no idea. “—Am I,” he corrected, “looking for?”

 

“Well,” Luna began, “Jipselwaffs are translucent, so they’re hard to see, but they have this glimmer-like, watery glow to them caused by the failing light just before the darkest hours of the day. It’s the only time when you can really see them well enough to catch them. They look a lot like pixies, only they’re not. They’re very feisty, but if you catch them by the wings they’ll fall still because they’re afraid you’ll tear them, which would render them flightless.”

 

Harry realized that at that moment, though she was talking complete and utter nonsense, she sounded a lot like Hermione. He smiled at the small connection his mind made and focused his eyes on the glittering white particles salt along the windowsill. They stood there for a while in silence, never seeing anything or hearing anything. Harry’s eyes eventually wandered back to Luna.

 

She was watching the windowsill as if any moment a Jipselwaff would suddenly appear, buzzing away cheerfully at the discovery of the salt. He wondered if maybe they should get out of the way. If a Jipselwaff saw them, wouldn’t it fly away in fear? Or—

 

Harry blinked.

_No_ , he thought. _It’s impossible_.

 

Was he actually beginning to _believe_ this far-fetched story of such a creature? One seemingly intelligent enough explanation of it, and suddenly, it was real? Harry frowned at himself. But Luna looked so determined, so utterly convinced of its existence. Though to be honest, she always looked that way whenever she talked about imaginary creatures known only to her.

 

When he realized he was staring at her, Harry cleared his throat abruptly and turned his face away from Luna. He hoped the heat he felt creeping up from his neck was not showing through his face. Luna, however, remained determinedly watching the salt, blissfully unaware of his thoughts and the bodily reactions he was having to them.

 

Then her eyes went wider than usual, and Luna carefully began to lift her gloved hand. Harry looked at the windowsill, saw nothing, and directed a critical gaze at Luna. She did not even notice it, though, with her attention all focused upon something in front of them. Luna’s hand suddenly shot out to grab an invisible creature that Harry deemed was a Jipselwaff.

 

“Harry, I’ve got it!” she cried out, sounding happier than he had heard from her in weeks. Harry felt so amazingly idiotic just standing there with her. There was absolutely _nothing_ in her hand. Luna reached out carefully with her gloveless fingers to the nonexistent creature. Harry actually felt his nerves jump when she gave off a painful, “Ow!” She jerked her hand back from the other, looking down at it.

 

Against his will, he asked, “Are you alright?”

 

“Yes, it just bit me . . . ” Luna replied in her dreamy, off-handed way. She spoke as thought it were the most natural thing in the world. Luna then lifted up her ‘bitten’ hand to look at it more closely, and Harry looked too out of curiosity.

 

His mind went entirely blank at what he saw.

 

One of her fingers was bleeding.

 

Harry’s attention immediately returned to her gloved hand, where the Jipselwaff was supposedly held captive. He approached Luna with caution, reaching out his right hand with a slow determination and covering hers with it. Harry felt his whole belief structure collapse inside of him as a soft, gel-like sensation pressed against the glove and squirmed beneath his palm. His mouth fell open in shock and disbelief, and when he looked up to see Luna’s face, she was smiling.

 

“Feeling is believing,” Luna said in a cheerful singsong voice.

 

Harry didn’t know what to say. He looked down at their clasped hands, a shiver running through him as the Jipselwaff squirmed some more, tickling him. Harry turned his eyes up to Luna once more, who was still staring at him and smiling.

 

He felt the beginnings of a smile that was all his own creeping up onto his face. Harry glanced between their hands and Luna’s sparkling eyes, finally starting to laugh. The Jipselwaff wriggled like mad between their hands, demanding to be released, and he laughed some more as its motions tickled him. Luna grinned at his laughter. _She was right all along_ , Harry admitted to himself. _She was right_.

 

And then his laughter slowly died, and he gazed at her in silence with perhaps a bit of reverence. The moonlight, he thought, suited her so well.

 

Luna’s grin faded as she gazed back at him with a look bordering on curiosity. Her silvery eyes peered into him, maybe seeing into his soul; they sure looked as if they could do such a thing. Harry swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat, not sure just where it came from.

 

Impulsively, without any other thought inside of his head except the strange and foreign notion of how beautiful Luna looked in front of him, Harry leaned in and kissed her. Luna didn’t stiffen or pull away from him. She simply leaned into the kiss as well, pressing her lips against his with a soft motion. He released her hand, finding a grip safely behind her head. An odd sort of fire he had never felt with Cho ignited somewhere in his body when she kissed him back. He wrapped his other arm around her waist, willing himself not to fall over from his sudden inability to stand up properly. Harry felt one of Luna’s arms curl around his waist as well, and every single thought in his mind ceased.

 

Eventually, the kiss broke, and the two of them slowly pulled away from each other. A pair of glimmering green eyes stared into a pair of shimmering silver ones. At some point, Luna’s gaze drifted down at her left hand. She frowned slightly, her eyebrows creasing.

 

“The Jipselwaff got away,” she said a bit sadly.

 

Harry couldn’t help but smile.

 

“Then we’ll catch another one,” he said, pulling her in for a second kiss.

 

 


End file.
